Sands of time

"Mother Nature is very good at erasing the blackboard, and she'll erase the Monitor if we don't do something soon."
- Former NOAA marine archaeologist Ervan Garrison

Exactly 135 years ago this week, the USS Monitor - one of the most famous warships in naval history - slipped to the bottom of the sea during a Cape Hatteras storm.

Lost for more than a century, the iron wreck is now in danger of vanishing again - unless its federal government caretakers can find support for a $20 million plan to save the disintegrating hulk from the corrosive effects of the Atlantic Ocean.

Battered by currents and gnawed by salt, what was once one of the world's mightiest vessels lies crumbling in the shifting sand, waiting for its fate to be decided. Yet, despite questions about the cost, effectiveness and even legitimacy of a rescue attempt, no one disputes that - without a concerted effort - the Monitor will soon be gone.

Civil War historians such as John V. Quarstein, whose Virginia War Museum stands only miles from the site of the ship's historic battle in Hampton Roads, call the possibility tragic. Nautical archaeologist Gordon P. Watts Jr., the pioneering maritime scholar who discovered the wreck, describes the loss as irrecoverable.

On a crisp, clear morning in March 1862, the Monitor's clash with the Confederate ironclad Virginia gave naval history an astounding jump start, signaling the end of wooden sailing ships and the arrival of steam and iron. The thunderous brawl also heralded America's first steps as a genuine military power.

"There are two important symbols of the naval history of the Civil War - the Monitor and the Virginia - and one of them is already gone," Watts says.

"Now there are no ifs, no ands and no buts that the Monitor is going to be destroyed, too. The only responsible thing to do is recover as much material and information as we can before it's lost."

News of the Monitor's impending demise comes less than 25 years after Watts and Duke University geologist John Newton, using remote cameras, discovered the wreck in 220 feet of water about 16 miles off Cape Hatteras.

For more than a quarter century before their search, the elusive vessel had frustrated every attempt to pinpoint its location, mostly because of an oft-repeated report regarding the appearance of five bodies on a nearby beach just days after the Dec. 31, 1862 sinking.

"Nobody could find it because they were looking too close to shore," says Dina Hill, education coordinator at the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, which is based at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News.

"The theory was that the ship had continued to drift toward shore before sinking in shallow water, when actually she sank quite quickly after she was last seen."

Still, even Watts couldn't be sure of what he had found after the August 1973 expedition. Of two wrecks located near the Monitor's last known position, one turned out to be a modern fishing boat with a deceptive feature - a central tower that resembled the ironclad's famous revolving turret. The other remained an enigma.

Puzzling over primitive videotape and a fragmented mosaic of black- and-white photographs, Watts spent nearly six months comparing his evidence to the Monitor's original plans before he recognized what had happened.

"It was two o'clock one morning when the pieces finally clicked," he says. "It took a long time to realize that the ship had landed upside down."

Watts' luck changed in 1977, when he returned to the wreck as part of the first expedition organized by the Monitor's government caretaker, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

On the first descent of their four-man sub, he and his crew stumbled across a brass navigation lantern rolling in the sand. Historians believe it may have cast the red distress signal seen just before the Monitor went down.

In 1979 and 1983, archaeologists returned to excavate near the captain's cabin. They also found the ship's 1,500-pound anchor about 500 feet from the wreck.

Then, in 1987, NOAA began a systematic attempt to assess the vessel's condition, beginning with a metallurgical survey designed to measure the corrosion rate of the Monitor's iron hull. That study uncovered the first signs that the apparently stable structure might be in poorer condition than previously thought, sanctuary manager John D. Broadwater says.

Constructed almost entirely from iron plates and rivets of slightly different compositions, the ship had weakened considerably due to an electro-chemical process that - over the years - had slowly eaten away at the holes surrounding each of the metal shafts.

"We knew it was in a deteriorating condition. Any iron ship lying in salt water is," Broadwater says.

"But when they studied the readings, they found not one large metal object that needed protecting but many different metallic objects corroding at different rates. That really put it in pieces."

Only a few years later, after NOAA started a program of annual assessment dives, the elusive picture of the Monitor's condition darkened still more. Catastrophic changes took place as the most fragile sections of the iron hull started to collapse.

In 1991, the skeg supporting the propeller and rudder housing gave way after what officials believe was a snag from a fishing boat anchor. Sport divers reported the damage immediately, but Broadwater still couldn't believe it when he returned to the bottom in 1993.

"We were just astonished. That should have been one of the strongest parts," he says.

"It showed us that we had not only human problems to deal with but that the hull was in far worse condition than we thought. We had been focusing on how to deal with a wreck that we thought was relatively stable when - all of a sudden - everything we had been doing to protect it became irrelevant."

Since 1993, the Monitor's rate of destruction has quickened, threatening more and more of the ship.

"The area where we see the most damage is fighting the current - and the current is winning," Broadwater says.

Strapped for funds, the sanctuary office has been largely unable to respond until this year, when Congress asked NOAA to prepare a proposal for dealing with the deteriorating wreck.

Even then, the agency received no additional money for the study, Broadwater says. Only the expertise and time donated by Oceaneering International Technologies Inc., a Louisiana-based salvage firm, made it possible to produce the two-volume, 600-page report.

Submitted to the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans in November, the proposal examines a half-dozen options ranging from doing nothing to full recovery of the wreck. Using a computer-aided ranking of the costs, technical risks, historical impact and other factors associated with each approach, it then recommends a $20 million plan to recover the most threatened parts of the Monitor and stabilize what remains.

Anything less would be irresponsible, Broadwater says. Anything more - including complete recovery of the 987-ton hulk - simply costs too much.

"We would be spending a tremendous amount of money - maybe as much as $50 million - for a result that might not be all that successful," he says.

Enthusiasm for raising the entire ship has diminished considerably since 1978, when Willard F. Searle Jr., the Navy's supervisor of salvage, bleakly added up the costs and possible damage that could be expected from such an operation. Still, any attempt to recover the turret and other historically significant parts of the wreck today will face many of the same problems, Broadwater says.

Located in 220 feet of water, the Monitor lies nearly 100 feet below the limit for recreational divers, making it accessible only to highly trained divers using sophisticated techniques and equipment.

Once on the bottom, free divers can only remain for about 20 minutes. Tethered divers may stay longer - but only if they work from a pressurized diving bell and return to pressurized living quarters.

Even then, the divers will face frequently treacherous currents caused by the meeting of the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current. Conditions on the surface will be little better, Broadwater says, describing the unpredictable storms that have ruined past expeditions.

"It's not the easiest place in the world to work in," says Leonard Whitlock, the Oceaneering International diving supervisor who authored much of the NOAA study.

"You're offshore. You're in open water. You're diving on a highly exposed site in variable sea conditions. People spend a lot of time there rocking and rolling on the surface waiting for the weather."

Such extreme conditions and enormous costs make some people - including a few of the Monitor's staunchest supporters -question the wisdom of the NOAA proposal.

Author Roderick Farb, who has visited the wreck some 60 times since it opened to recreational divers in 1990, thinks any rescue attempt now will do more harm than good.

"It should have been done years ago - and it may have been too late even when they discovered it," says Farb, who has become one of NOAA's most important sources of photographs, videos and eye-witness reports on the vessel.

"The site should be left alone. It's an opportunity for disaster."

Also skeptical is attorney G. Jona Poe, who, along with Farb, has logged more bottom time with the Monitor in recent years than any of its government guardians.

Though he hopes to help in any new effort - and dutifully turns over copies of videos and photos after each dive - he questions the ambition of the proposal.

"I'm not sure it makes sense economically or - when you consider how fragile this thing is - in terms of preservation," he says.

"Maybe we should focus on the recovery of small artifacts instead."

Neither man thinks the rescue attempt will materialize because of its multi-million-dollar price tag. Though Congress has authorized NOAA to work with such partners as the Navy and private companies or foundations, it has pledged no federal funds to help finance the project, Broadwater says.

The agency's entire sanctuary budget, in fact, totals only $14 million - and that must be split by the Monitor and 12 other sites.

"We've always had to do it on a shoestring," says former NOAA marine archaeologist Ervan Garrison, now at the University of Georgia.

"They need millions to do what needs to be done - not thousands - and that's all they get. Everybody knows it's not enough."

Still, the hope for some kind of effort remains strong among many of those familiar with the Monitor's importance - if only because the alternative appears so bleak.

Lose the Monitor, Garrison says, and we lose the "only tangible link to one of the great defining moments in our nation's history."

"It's probably the greatest symbol of the war that made this country," historian Quarstein says.

"The Civil War was the first war of technology - the first truly modern war - and the Monitor has become the holy grail of its history. This was the ship that showed us the future."

TALK TO THE MONITOR

The plan to raise parts of the Monitor can be found on the Internet at www.nos.noaa.gov/nmsp/monitor/plan. The site includes an e-mail address for making electronic comments.

The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary Office, which is based in Newport News, can also be reached by telephone at 599-3122. Comments on the proposal are welcome.